AMUSING, INTERESTING, OUTRAGEOUS, or PROFOUND

2099 readers

302 users here now

This is a page for anything that's amusing, interesting, outrageous, or profound.

♦ ♦ ♦

RULES

❶ Each player gets six cards, except the player on the dealer's right, who gets seven.

❷ Posts, comments, and participants must be amusing, interesting, outrageous, or profound.

❸ This page uses Reverse Lemmy-Points™, or 'bad karma'. Please downvote all posts and comments.

❹ Posts, comments, and participants that are not amusing, interesting, outrageous, or profound will be removed.

❺ This is a non-smoking page. If you must smoke, please click away and come back later.

❻ Don't be a dick.

Please also abide by the instance rules.

♦ ♦ ♦

Can't get enough? Visit my blog.

♦ ♦ ♦

Please consider donating to Lemmy and Lemmy.World.

$5 a month is all they ask — an absurdly low price for a Lemmyverse of news, education, entertainment, and silly memes.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

DougHolland@lemmy.world

Tom Lehrer: Satirist, mathematician, inventor of the Jello shot (go.theregister.com)

submitted 1 week ago by PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au to c/aiop@lemmy.world

5 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 14 points 1 week ago (2 children)

He remained active and engaged even later in his life. Rapper Tauheed K. Epps, who records as "2 Chainz", sampled Lehrer's song The Old Dope Peddler [PDF] for his track Dope Peddler, asking permission to use a snippet. Lehrer wrote back:

As sole copyright owner of 'The Old Dope Peddler', I grant you motherfuckers permission to do this. Please give my regards to Mr. Chainz, or may I call him 2?

We linked to his lyrics, although they are slightly inconveniently PDF files, because in 2020, he placed all of his lyrics in the public domain. A couple of years later, he did the same with all his original melodies, ending the disclaimer on tomlehrersongs.com:

In short, I no longer retain any rights to any of my songs.

So help yourselves, and don't send me any money.

Legend.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 11 points 1 week ago

He also said it felt weird performing his songs in public; he compared it to a novelist showing up to read their book out loud to people. You guys have the album, that's why I made it. What do you need me for? I don't know you people and I'm up on this big stage, this feels weird. I want to go home and relax.

Be like Tom 😀

[–] Hegar@fedia.io 6 points 1 week ago

Also he was like 83 when he wrote that response to Mr Chainz and like 94 when he made his stuff public domain